Title text: But to us there is but one God, plus or minus one. —1 Corinthians 8:6±2.

Explanation

This comic is a reference to the increasing coverage of the prediction by Harold Camping that the Rapture will be on May 21, 2011. The Rapture is a belief developed by an Anglican priest in the 1830s named John Darby who was recovering from an injury following a fall from his horse. He combined many pieces of Christian scripture into the idea that true Christians will be taken into heaven before Christ returns to Earth. This belief is held by some Chrsitians and was made more popular by the Left Behind series.

The first frame is a reference to raptors in Jurassic Park. In this film, the raptor dinosaurs get much more dangerous once they learn how to open doors. Cueball mishears Megan, which is why he thinks she said “Raptors” instead of “Rapture”.

In the second frame, Cueball references three major religions. Christian and church for Christianity, Mosque for Islam and Rabbi for Judaism.

The third frame is a math joke in which Megan references error bars which are used on graphs to indicate the uncertainty. So, Megan believes in one God (monotheism), as she says in the comic. But if she is still trying to find the error bars, and from the title text it is “one, plus or minus one”, that could be in the range of zero (Atheism) to two (Bitheism).

The title text is a supposed excerpt from the holy text of experimental monotheism. First Corinthians is a book of the Christian Bible. Megan refers to chapter 8 verse 6 (±2), which would be verses 4–8. In the actual bible text, this section refers to idols and “so called gods”, but also states “There is no God but one.”

Transcript

[Cueball and Megan talking.]

Megan: So are you worried about the rapture?

Cueball: No, unless it figures out how to open doors.

Megan: I said rapture.

Cueball: Oh, I'm not really into that. I'm the kind of christian who only goes to church on Christmas and Easter, and then spends the other 363 days at the mosque.

Megan: ...I don't think that's a thing.

Cueball: Our rabbi swears it's legit.

Cueball: What religion are you?

Megan: Experimentalist Monotheism.

Cueball: Which is?

Megan: We believe there's one god, but we're trying to find the error bars on that number.

Discussion

Where's the experimental evidence that there is actually a god? Davidy²²[talk] 02:01, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Consider who is proposing such an experiment. QED. 184.66.160.91 03:10, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Subjectivism is the provenance of earth-scientists and the devout. But god preserve us from the devout earth-scientists. (That's the thing about god, he's the only one who can get the monkey off your back.)

I'm sure you can find not one but several definitions of god with experimental evidence. Of course, this says more about how vague definitions of god are that about the god. -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:06, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. There are no proof that no god exist, only some proof that certain definition of god cannot be true. Arifsaha (talk) 20:49, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Oddly considering Paul was Jewish (as was Jesus) most Christian versions of the bible have slanted their beliefs to allow a comma after the word father in the verse quoted. Just found out that so do Unitarian bibles. Does Jewish have commas?

With a large "if I'm remembering right" first... The relevant book of the Bible was written in Greek. They didn't even put spaces between words, much less use punctuation, but why would that make it strange for commas to be used in English translations?173.245.50.174 17:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

The play on the quote in the comic is that it is plus or minus Jesus as god in that verse. Rather a loaded quote from a trained lawyer!

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